September 25, 2013

"Your writing is pretty good, Beast, but the quality and intelligence of your comments is at the bottom. The nastiness spewing from these red-captioned paragraphs negatively colors your whole enterprise."

23 comments:

I haven't clicked over there to read yet, but ... I can't think of anyone more deserving of massive comment backlash than someone who (a) thinks a global hegemon would be a nifty idea; and (b) thinks Hillary Clinton would be perfect in the part.

On second thought, maybe I'd better not go over there. My comment finger is getting itchy.

I've got news for the commentor --- comments generally suck everywhere except at highly technical websites where you know the topic at hand or else! Check out any news article, especially if it's on a controversial topic, over CNN or any of the other major news sites. You'll start wondering if the boob-grabbing baboons also get laptops & broadband access at their zoo digs.

Honestly, the extended Althouse community of bloggers (i.e. including the boys & girls over at Lem's) is really one of the best I've found on the 'Net. That's why I've hung around all these years.

And, if that isn't a goddamn frightening commentary on the quality of discourse on the WWW, I don't know what is.

What difference, at this point, does it make? Why are they still talking about what happened yesterday or last week? It's not like someone died or something. It's just a clump of words anxiously hoping for relevance.

It's interesting that they blame "trolls." My comments at HuffPo are routinely moderated and I never see if they ever appear. Most left wing blogs ban my comments. I think left wing sites have a real aversion to opposing opinions. I still comment here, occasionally but moderation reduces my interest.

Honestly, the extended Althouse community of bloggers (i.e. including the boys & girls over at Lem's) is really one of the best I've found on the 'Net. That's why I've hung around all these years.

Yes, that's so. Comment sections that include intelligent people from all political perspectives are vanishingly rare. Which is why, when Ann decided to cut off comments, my response was "Nooooooo!"

Of course, she stuck that out for about a week, as I expected she would, because she enjoys the comments almost as much as the commenters do.

Anyway, as I was saying, places where you can have civil conversations with people of differing political views are very rare. This is one. The Volokh Conspiracy is one. Megan McArdle's site (now at Bloomberg) is a third.

Honestly, there is not much else; everything devolves quickly to echo-chamber status, and while there are obviously a lot of people who like that, I don't.

-- You have to think of it from their point of view. They don't see the right as wrong on policy or approach. I think of ACA as bad or flawed policy. The more radical people on the left view stopping the ACA as actual oppression of minorities that will kill people. Once you remember that, silencing opinions makes sense. They aren't trying to quash debate; they are trying to keep you from promoting murder.

Which is a problem, because there are plenty of moderate, open-minded people on the left who don't equate political differences with moral failings. It's why I've given up on the Daily Kos and a few other places I would go to regularly in the early 2000s for a view from the left. They're openly hostile, but not just politically. They think I want to kill people with my idea, and that I know that is what will happen and want it to happen.

Best to abandon Huff Po, Daily Kos, et al, because they're not rational places for discourse.